Ahmed, 17, one of the cousins, remembers the moment when the shell struck, but pauses as he tells his story to nervously rub the muscles at the top of his thighs. The shell that hit their cart that afternoon sliced off his left leg just above the knee and his right leg halfway up his calf. He still has an aching pain in his bandaged stumps.

They had stopped the cart and two of the boys jumped off. "They went to collect something, some metal bars, and then they came back to the cart," he said. The boys hoped to sell the strips of metal for scrap. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) later determined that the metal came from a launcher for a Qassam, one of the crude rockets launched by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel. Qassams had been fired from the area that morning, though the militants had since left.

What a crude and cowardly insertion - as if to say this was not Israel's fault. What a farse.

Who says Qassams were fired from the area that morning? The IDF?

WHO SAW THEM? WHO FIRED THEM? WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE???

"Then the shell struck. I saw my mother [Khariya] dead and Nadi killed. I saw them dead on the ground," Ahmed said. "I looked down and then I saw my legs were cut away."

Human rights field workers believe an artillery shell, fired from an Israeli military position not far away at the border with the Gaza Strip, hit the cart. Several were fired that day, July 24 - one day in a long and damaging Israeli military operation.

"I think it happened because of the metal we were collecting," Ahmed said. "But we were just going to the farm." He was taken to hospital with another cousin, Shadi, who was wounded in the stomach by shrapnel. Nadi and Khariya, 58, were killed instantly.

"We had lunch together," said Nadi's father, Habib, 36. "Then he went with his grandmother and never came back."

The deaths are not an isolated case. For the past two months, while the world's attention in the Middle East has been focused on the conflict in Lebanon, the Israeli military has led a wave of intense operations along the length of the Gaza Strip. It began after the capture of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants on June 25. The Israeli military said its operations were intended to free Cpl Shalit and to halt Qassam rocket fire. Early on the Israelis bombed Gaza's only power plant and they have kept Gaza's crossing points to Israel and Egypt closed for most of the time.

Since the start of the operation, codenamed Summer Rain, at least 240 Palestinians have been killed. One in five were children. According to the PCHR, which has investigated each case, 197 of the dead were civilians and the vast majority were killed in Gaza. Among them were 12 women and 48 children.

Yesterday an Israeli military spokesman said his forces did not target civilians. "Our actions are targeted only at terrorist organisations, terror activities and infrastructure," he said. "It can happen that innocent people are hit. But the responsibility does not lie with the Israeli army, but rather with the terror groups who are working within civilian populations without any regard to the danger they are causing."

More than two months into the Gaza operation Israel has still not secured the release of Cpl Shalit or stopped Qassam rocket fire." [surprise, surprise]

We believe that the whole offensive against the Gaza Strip is characterised by being an act of revenge and retaliation in which civilians are paying the price," said Hamdi Shaqqura, a founder member of the PCHR in Gaza City. "They have demonstrated total disregard for the rights of innocent Palestinian civilians. There has been an excessive use of force, a disproportionate use of force in civilian areas, and that explains the high toll of death."

Mr Shaqqura also condemned the Palestinian militants for launching the Qassams and for firing them from civilian areas. "This is illegal and we have called on them to stop," he said.

Many relatives of those killed by the Israelis in Gaza have been equally critical of the rocket attacks. "We get nothing out of it," said Muhammad al-Attar, 23, another of Nadi's cousins. "After they launch rockets we get killed and they destroy our farms."

Cui bono? I'll give you a hint - not Palestinians.

A few hours after the donkey cart was hit a shell was fired into Beit Hanoun, another district of northern Gaza. It killed Khitam Tayeh, 11, who was on her way to the shops after school with her sister Nuha, 12. Nuha was hit by a piece of shrapnel in her left thigh, but survived. Khitam had a severe head injury and died in hospital.

"I carried her in from the ambulance and took her to the operating room in my arms," said her father, Muhammad 48. "Then she died. They couldn't do anything." He showed several framed photographs of his daughter, with long dark hair and wide brown eyes. Two bright stars had been superimposed in the background.

Mr Tayeh has collected a box of shrapnel from the scene, a couple of dozen sharp, rigid shards of metal, each three or four inches long, and talks of bringing a legal case against the Israeli military. Like many, a year ago he had hoped that life in Gaza would improve when Israeli settlers were withdrawn, in what seemed a ground-breaking move.

"People expected it would get better, but it's been the opposite," he said. "Don't tell me they withdrew. It's like they didn't leave. They are everywhere."

On the eastern side of Gaza, in Shujaiya, Hussam al-Sirsawi, 12, was with his friends standing on the street watching Israeli troops fighting against militants in the distance on August 27. He was badly injured by a piece of shrapnel and died three days later.

"You know how children are when they hear something happen. They want to go and see," said his uncle Nasser al-Sirsawi, 37. "I can't say why the Israelis killed him. These army people are full of hatred. Maybe these kids went to watch some resistance people and they were in the wrong place. To kill a child like this is not natural." On the wall opposite his cloth shop there is graffiti dedicated to his nephew. "Hussam," it says, "we swear to God you won." "Of course," said his uncle, "he's a martyr."

Two days later there was another incident in Shujaiya, when again a group of children were watching the fighting. Either a tank shell or a large chunk of shrapnel flew at them and hit Muhammad al-Ziq, 14, on the head. He died instantly. "I think sometimes they just want the Palestinians to pay," said his uncle, Ziad al-Ziq, 36. "He was with children wanting to see what was happening. There was no excuse for what happened."

All of the dead and most of the injured pass through the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Staff photograph the bodies of the dead - they call the victims "martyrs" - and document their injuries. Juma'a al-Saqqa called up a picture on his computer screen of Muhammad al-Ziq, an appalling image of the boy lying on his side on a metal morgue table, the side of his head sliced away.In the past two months the hospital's doctors have dealt with 1,280 injured from the military operations, a third of whom were children. The doctors performed 60 amputations.

Dr Saqqa flicks through the photographic record, images of bodies charred beyond recognition, flesh no longer human in form.Many of the figures were young children, at least one in a shredded blue school uniform."We have passed through the worst situation we have ever come across in our years of work," he said. "But this is our situation. What can we do? We raised our voices to the world, but nobody moves."

Nobody moves.

But, if it were your child with their head sliced away, or their legs shorn off, so help you God, you would move - heaven and earth, if you could - to punish the beast that carved them out of your lives with the brutality of a butcher.

I am no longer surprised to learn that Israel killed another child in its lust for Arab land. I simply wake each morning and wonder how many children they killed today.

17 Comments:

You’ve got to be lucky to make $4 Billion killing on a 6-month investment of $124 Million

Larry Silverstein is the New York property tycoon who purchased the entire WTC complex just 6 months prior to the 9/11 attacks. That was the first time in its 33-year history the complex had EVER changed ownership.

Mr. Silverstein’s first order of business as the new owner was to change the company responsible for the security of the complex. The new security company he hired was Securacom (now Stratasec). George W. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, was on its board of directors, and Marvin’s cousin, Wirt Walker III, was its CEO. According to public records, not only did Securacom provide electronic security for the World Trade Center, it also covered Dulles International Airport and United Airlines — two key players in the 9/11 attacks.

The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for many years to the Bush family. KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.

Now, consider: The members of a small cabal owned the WTC complex, controlled its electronic security, and also controlled the security not only for one of the airlines whose aircraft were hijacked on 9/11, but the airport from which they originated.

Another little “coincidence” -- Mr. Silversten, who made a down-payment of $124 million on this $3.2 billion complex, promptly insured it for $7 Billion. Not only that, he covered the complex against “terrorist attacks”.

Following the attacks, Silverstein filed TWO insurance claims for the maximum amount of the policy ($7B), based on the two -- in Silverstein's view -- separate attacks. The insurance company, Swiss Re, paid Mr. Silverstein $4.6 Billion — a princely return on a relatively paltry investment of $124 million.

There’s more. You see, the World Trade Towers were not the real estate plum we are led to believe. From an economic standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its inception by the NY Port Authority -- has never functioned, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. How could Silverstein Group have been ignorant of this?

The towers required some $200 million in renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built. It was well-known by the city of New York that the WTC was an asbestos bombshell. For years, the Port Authority treated the building like an aging dinosaur, attempting on several occasions to get permits to demolish the building for liability reasons, but being turned down due the known asbestos problem. Further, it was well-known the only reason the building was still standing until 9/11 was because it was too costly to disassemble the twin towers floor by floor since the Port Authority was prohibited legally from demolishing the buildings.

The projected cost to disassemble the towers: $15 Billion. Just the scaffolding for the operation was estimated at $2.4 Billion!

In other words, the Twin Towers were condemned structures. How convenient that an unexpected “terrorist” attack demolished the buildings completely.

WTC Building 7 was a part of the WTC complex, and covered under the same insurance policy. This 47-storey steel-framed structure, which was NOT struck by an aircraft, mysteriously collapsed 8 hours later that same day into its own footprint at freefall speed — exactly in the manner of the Twin Towers.

How could this have happened? Mr. Silverstein gave the world the answer when he slipped up during a PBS television interview a year later, on 9/11/2002:

"I remember getting a call from the...er...fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

As anyone who knows anything about construction can tell you, “Pull” is common industry jargon for a controlled demolition.

One thing is for sure, the decision to 'pull' WTC 7 would have delighted many people. Especially because it has been reported that thousands of sensitive files relating to some of the biggest financial scams in history — including Enron and WorldCom -- were stored in the offices of some of the building’s tenants:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has not quantified the number of active cases in which substantial files were destroyed by the collapse of WTC 7. Reuters news service and the Los Angeles Times published reports estimating them at 3,000 to 4,000. They include the agency's major inquiry into the manner in which investment banks divvied up hot shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom. ..."Ongoing investigations at the New York SEC will be dramatically affected because so much of their work is paper-intensive," said Max Berger of New York's Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. "This is a disaster for these cases."

Citigroup says some information that the committee is seeking [about WorldCom] was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Salomon had offices in 7 World Trade Center. The bank says that back-up tapes of corporate emails from September 1998 through December 2000 were stored at the building and destroyed in the attack.

Inside WTC 7 was the US Secret Service's largest field office with more than 200 employees. "All the evidence that we stored at 7 World Trade, in all our cases, went down with the building," according to US Secret Service Special Agent David Curran.

What a neat, complete, and fortuitous turn of events was 9/11.

Incidentally, it’s worth noting that one of Lucky Larry’s closest friends — a person with whom it’s said he speaks almost daily by phone — is none other than former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Unable to respond to the issues on the other 911 threads, the Plant(s) have devised their own, a Distraction from this fact. Even though he already implied there are too many such threads - in an attempt to distract from his lack of relevant commentary.

"I been reading the stuff posted about 911"

And yet, you haven't actually been able to address any of it.

"maybe some of whom sit at the same keyboard."

This is a neat little Disinformation Tactic, intended to imply that the people asking questions about the Official Conspiracy Theory of 911, are all one and the same. Usually people like our resident Troll make accusations like this when they are, in fact, the ones doing such things.

But note how the author doesn't actually say anything.

"Who would be crazy enough to risk the Presidency"

What risk?

Diebold Voting Systems handed him another term. And the agenda penned in 1992, of rampant military Aggression and overspending, enabled by the "Useful Crisis" of 911, continues ... Even if Bush the man had lost the post, the Extremists behind his Regime and its policies would have achieved their wars, and made billions, which is really the point.

"That plot wouldn’t be believable in a comic book!"

That's why it succeeds. It's referred to as The Big Lie. Hitler achieved this when he burned the Reichstag, and framed his opponents for it.

"Who is crazy enough to believe all those nutty conspiracy theories?"

Doubt about official version of 9/11 widespreadhttp://www.vancourier.com/issues06/084206/opinion/084206op2.html

Oh, do you mean the one whereby poor, little, defenseless America is threatened by the "Muslim Hordes"? I don't know who would believe it, especially without the evidence to back it up, and while people with more credibility than the "Saddam has nukes!!" guys contradicting them.

The Big Lie About 'Islamic Fascism'by Eric Margolis

The latest big lie unveiled by Washington’s neoconservatives are the poisonous terms, "Islamo-Fascists" and "Islamic Fascists." They are the new, hot buzzwords among America’s far right and Christian fundamentalists.

Actually, judging by the polls, not many, however, tight control of the concentrated US corporate media structure ensures that little dissenting facts reach the public. Thank God for the internet!

Cheney Can't Scare Me Anymore

I'm not sure we're quite ready for this approach, but for the first time since Sept. 11, I see signs that America is gradually coming to its senses. The country is like the addicted gambler who, instead of continuing his doomed search for a game he can win, finally begins to wonder if the real problem is his presence in the casino.http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15378263.htm

I fear that if these Extremists are not held to account for their actions, and stripped of power at the very least, they will devise some new scheme to terrorize the populace once again into submission.

RIP the Walking Dead?

"You could more easily start a war over a border incident!"

Indeed, A war. But the small group of Extremists in DC whose policy this is do not want A war, they want Perpetual War, a regional war, against the Race their Supremacist Ideology despises, because these men (and their histories do not lie) can only profit and maintain power through violent conflict.

"Reading through that nonsense"

That what, now? In order to make this assessment, you have to actually refute - or even address - the material. You haven't been able to do this, despite my supreme patience on the matter.

"all the signs say, “No Fact Zone.”

I suspect that anywhere you post becomes a no fact zone.

But you've given away the fact that you're posting for the consumers of Faux News, and we know that Faux News LIES to people, and that its viewers, insulated in their little bubble, are not at all well-informed.

Study: Misperceptions About Iraq war Contributed to Support For Itwww.commondreams.org/headlines03/1003-08.htm

"Maybe Peace could come sooner if we all embraced a dose of reality…"

Indeed, and I think this is happening right now, as the failures, inconsistencies, and outright, exposed LIES of our supposed "leaders" have the majority of people looking right at them as the world's greatest threat, instead of looking where these Neo-Fascists told them to, while the public's rational mind was momentarily numbed by the horrors of that terrible day.

How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primerhttp://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm

"Only the true liberals"

The Extreme Right loves to toss about these labels, in order to:

1) Dehumanize their Opposition.

2) Shift the focus off of themselves, since they know they cannot "win" on facts or their own merits, and wish to disguise how far to the Right, how radical, and how far outside of the mainstream they, themselves, actually are.

3) Make their Opposition seem smaller and less diverse than it really is, since it comprises the vast majority.

4) Misrepresent what their Opposition believes in, and why they are asking sensitive questions.

5) Distract from the issues and facts.

This is much easier to do when they have such a tightly-controlled, concentrated media, not to mention CIA Operatives and Hate-mongers such as the discredited Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, who manipulate buzzwords like "liberal". The same was true in every such criminal Regime, from Hitler to Joseph McCarthy.

"Watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal ..." Supertramp, The Logical Song

"They never answer questions."

Whereb exactly have you addressed the issues?Please show us.

That's a LIE. You'll note that in the other 911 threads - as in this one - I address your Disinformation point-by-point.

You, on the other hand, never address my statements or the facts presented, because you can't.

Prove me wrong: What has the Bush/PNAC Regime ever done to make you believe it is logical to swallow on faith alone the unproven Conspiracy Theory about 911, which they have used to "justify" indefensible, immoral policies, which have bankrupted and discredited your country on the world stage?

"Most certainly not coming up with any real evidence to back their "theories".

I've posted reams of the stuff. You, on the other hand, haven't provided one shred to support your blind allegiance to the Official Mythology, or to those LIARS and War Criminals selling it. Unlike you, my opinion was drawn from the facts, as well as the fact that the Bush/PNAC Regime has been completely incapable of proving their Theory.

Note how the Plant(s) continues with the usual, carbon-copy Nothingness, instead of simply providing the still-absent, compelling and independently-verifiable evidence which would not only exist, but be forthcoming, if the Official Conspiracy Theory were true.

Five years after the fact, this is more than a bit suspicious, and damning to their case.

What motive would struggling politicos and the people who profit from conflict have?

How 9/11 changed America: In statisticshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/5305868.stm

Seekin' that Ol' 911 TruthAnd finally, if you still think it's all bunkum and you can debunk the 9/11 "tin-foil hat" conspiracy brigade, then take the million dollar challenge! I'm sure you could use a spare million bucks?

http://www.reopen911.org/Contest.htm

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/seekin.php

What really damns the Official Conspiracy Theory - the one fed to us by the people who've used it as the singular act which "necessitated" their plan of military overspending and aggression which they drew up in 1992, awaiting some "Useful Crisis", which is now the Bush/PNAC National Security Strategy - the fact that in five years, they have not been able to produce the compelling and independently-verifiable evidence which would exist - and be forthcoming - if it were true.

This alone is enough to warrant a serious investigation (which they personally blocked, usually a given after tragedies) into what really took place that horrible day, and who was responsible - lest we reward the perpetrators, and punish the innocent.

All they - or their Useful Idiots - would have to do is provide this still-missing, key, and independently-verifiable evidence, to prove their steadily-growing Opposition wrong.

Not even the Criminal Regime has been able to do so, despite being asked for five straight years now..

Put Up Or Shut Up, Plant.

I'm just glad that this movement is growing, and that people are able to be exposed to these questions. Perhaps with any luck, we'll soon know the truth.

May Peace and Reason return in the days ahead.

"No matter how far you have traveled down the wrong road, turn back" - Ancient Proverb

Proverbs 18:1

Where do they get this stuff?

25 Rules Of Truth Suppressionwww.benfrank.net/disinfo/

Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth: The Rules of Disinformationwww.whale.to/m/disin.html

Keep these handy the next time Bush/PNAC spoksepeople make a speech, especially since they couldn't dupe the international community into legitimizing their desired war with Iran, which they hope is right around the corner.

It has officially happened. After five long years, the topic of 9/11 truth has grown so large that it finally made the front cover of TIME Magazine. When the mainstream media realizes that news harmful to the Empire can no longer be ignored? It must now do its real job and work full-time in order to showcase, spin, and thoroughly marginalize the issue.

http://www.mytown.ca/garger/

Olbermann: 'The Nexus of politics and terror'

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann offered an updated top 10 list of occasions that the Bush Administration has gained political benefits around the same time that the public's fear of terrorism was at a peak. Olbermann describes it as "The Nexus of Politics and Terror."

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 nears, Christina Asquith finds academics querying the official version of events

Tuesday September 5, 2006The Guardian

Shards of glass and dust from the World Trade Centre towers sit on Professor Steven Jones's desk at Brigham Young University in Utah. Evidence, he says, of the biggest cover-up in history - one too evil for most to believe, but one he has staked his academic career on exposing.

The attacks of September 11, Jones asserts, were an "inside job", puppeteered by the neoconservatives in the White House to justify the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries, inflate military spending and expand Israel.

"We don't believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone," says Jones. "We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we're going to get to the bottom of this."

While this sinister spin strikes most American academics as absurd, Jones, a physics professor, is not alone. He is a member of 9/11 Scholars for Truth, a recently formed group of around 75 US professors determined to prove 9/11 was a hoax. In essays and journals, they are using their association with prominent universities to give a scholarly stamp to conspiracy theories long believed in parts of Europe and the Arab world, and gaining ground among Americans due to frustration with the Iraq war and opposition to President Bush's heavily hyped "war on terror".

Their iconoclastic positions have drawn wrath from rightwing radio shows and caused upheaval on campuses, triggering letters to newspapers, phone calls from parents and TV cameras in lecture halls.

In the Midwest, 61 legislators signed a petition calling for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin assistant professor, Kevin Barrett, after he joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth. Citing academic freedom, the university provost defended Barrett, albeit reluctantly.

A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll taken during the summer indicates that Americans are increasingly suspicious of the government's explanation of the events of 9/11: 36% said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, or took no action to stop them, "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East".

For most of the world, the story of 9/11 begins at 8.45am on September 11 2001, when American Airlines flight 11 smashed into the North tower of the World Trade Centre. But, tumble down the rabbit hole with Jones, and the plotline begins a year earlier, in September 2000. A neoconservative group called Project for a New American Century, which included the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, brought out a report arguing for a global expansion of American military and economic supremacy, and for the US to transform itself into a "one-world superpower". The report warned that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor".

Excuse for aggression

The group, in concert with about 20 others, orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 as an excuse for pre-emptive global aggression against Afghanistan, then Iraq and soon Iran, the academics say. And they insist that they have amassed a wealth of scientific data to prove it.

It is impossible, says Jones, for the towers to have collapsed from the collision of two aeroplanes, as jet fuel doesn't burn at temperatures hot enough to melt steel beams. The horizontal puffs of smoke - squibs - emitted during the collapse of the towers are indicative of controlled implosions on lower floors. The scholars have collected eyewitness accounts of flashes and loud explosions immediately before the fall.

The twin towers must, they say, have been brought down by explosives - hence the container of dust on Jones's desk, sent to him unsolicited by a woman living in lower Manhattan. He is using X-ray fluorescents to test it for explosive materials.

What's more, the nearby World Trade Centre 7 also collapsed later that afternoon. The building had not been hit by a plane, only damaged by fire. WTC 7 housed a clandestine CIA station, which the scholars believe was the command centre for the planning of 9/11.

"The planes were just a distraction," says Professor James Fetzer, 65, a recently retired philosopher of science at the University of Minnesota. "The evidence is so overwhelming, but most Americans don't have time to take a look at this."

But Jonathan Barnett, professor of fire protection engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, calls such claims "bad science". Barnett was a member of the World Trade Centre Building Performance Study, one of the government groups that investigated the towers' collapse.

Reluctantly, he has familiarised himself with the scholars' claims - many of them have emailed him. Yes, it is unusual for a steel structure to collapse from fire, Barnett agrees. However, his group and others argue that the planes' impact weakened the structures and stripped off the fireproofing materials. That caused the top floors of both towers to collapse on to the floors below. "A big chunk of building falling down made the next floor fall down, and then they all came down like a deck of cards," Barnett says.

The collapse of WTC 7 was also unusual, he admits. However, firefighters do not usually let a fire rage unabated for seven hours as they did on the morning of September 11, because they had prioritised the rescue of victims. "The fact that you don't have evidence to support your theory doesn't mean that the other theory is true," Barnett says. "They just made it up out of the blue."

Since the attacks, the US government has issued three reports into the events of the day, all of which involved hundreds of professors, scientists and government officials. The 9/11 Commission, a bipartisan group, issued a 500-page, moment-by-moment investigation into the hijackers' movements, concluding that they were connected to Osama bin Laden. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, filed 10,000 pages of reports examining the towers' collapse. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency weighed in, examining the response to the attacks.

"To plant bombs in three buildings with enough bomb materials and wiring? It's too huge a project and would require far too many people to keep it a secret afterwards," says Christopher Pyle, professor of constitutional law at Mt Holyoke College. "After every major crisis, like the assassinations of JFK or Martin Luther King, we've had conspiracy theorists who come up with plausible scenarios for gullible people. It's a waste of time."

But Barrett says the experts have been fooled by an "act of psychological conversion" not unlike the tactics CIA interrogators use on their victims. "People will disregard evidence if it causes their faith to be shattered," he says. "I think we were all shocked. And then, when the voice of authority told us what happened, we just believed it."

Misleading the public

History has revealed that governments have a tradition of misleading the public into going to war, says Barrett, and the next generation of Americans will realise the truth. "Europe and Canada are way ahead of us on this."

The 9/11 scholars go to great lengths to portray themselves as rational thinkers, who have been slowly won over by a careful, academic analysis of the facts of the day.

However, a study of the full extent of their claims is a journey into the increasingly absurd: Flight 93 did not crash in Pennsylvania but landed safely in Cleveland; desperate phone calls received by relatives on the ground from passengers were actually computer-generated voices from a laboratory in California. The Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines Flight 77, but by a smaller, remote-controlled A-3 Sky Warrior, which shot a missile into the building before crashing into it.

Many of the 9/11 scholars have a history of defending conspiracy theories, including that the CIA plotted both the Lockerbie bombing and the plane crash of John F Kennedy Jr and his wife, and that "global secret societies" control the world.

Professor Robert Goldberg, of the University of Utah, wrote a book on conspiracy theories, Enemies Within: the Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. He recounts a history of religious and political leaders using conspiracy theories for personal and political gain. The common enemy is usually Jews, big government or corporations. The public laps it up, either because these theories are more exciting than the truth, or out of emotional need.

"What the conspiracy theorists do is present their case with facts and figures: they have dates, meeting places and always name names," he says. "The case is always presented in a prosecutorial way, or the way an adventure writer presents a novel. It's a breathless account. They are willing to say hearsay is a fact, and rumour is true, and accidents are never what they seem.

"One of the stories is that a missile hit the Pentagon, and all the data is there. But what is missing is: what actually happened to the plane and the people on it? Conspiracy theorists avoid discussion of those facts that don't fit."

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the public's willingness to believe conspiracy theories parallels their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration. In recent years, the American public has felt misled over false claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

Many fear infringements on their civil liberties now the National Security Agency has gained access to phone billing records from telecommunications companies, the Bush administration has engaged in wiretapping without court warrants and there are thousands of cases of indefinite detentions of American and foreign citizens without trial. Those who criticise the Bush administration's "war on terror" are accused of being unpatriotic.

By taking their criticisms to such extremes, though, the scholars risk caricaturing the opposition. None the less, they are pushing on, and imploring Congress to reopen the investigation.

"We're academics and we're rational, and we really believe Congress or someone should investigate this," says David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor and 9/11 scholar. "But there are a lot of crazies out there who purport that UFOs were involved. We don't want to be lumped in with those folks."

28-Year Career CIA Official Says 9/11 An Inside JobReferencing the 2.3 trillion dollars that was discovered to be missing from the Pentagon's coffers, Christison emphasized the fact that with an unlimited budget, the scope of operations that could be undertaken by the military-industrial complex are almost without recourse.Posted Sep 7, 2006 09:22 AM PSTCategory: 911

You know, the money that vanished while Rabbi Zackheim was comptroller? The money that Rumsfeld admitted was missing just hours before 9-11 took the media's attention off what should have been a scandal of huge proportions?

A 28-year CIA career man and a former skeptic of alternative 9/11 explanations has gone further than ever before in voicing his convictions that the attacks bore the hallmarks of an inside job and the three buildings in the WTC complex were brought down by controlled demolition.

Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies.

In Christison's recent article, Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11, he afforded credibility to the notion that "significant parts" of the official 9/11 story were false and after careful research he concluded that the twin towers and building 7, "were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings."

Christison went further on The Alex Jones Show, agreeing that the attacks being an inside job was the "most likely possibility."

"David Griffin believes this all was totally an inside job - I've got to say I think that it was too," said Christison.

Christison initially approached the subject unwilling to even consider that elements of the government could be engaged in such heights of criminality but his research quickly began to change his mind.

"Just about half a year ago it dawned on me that not only was I trying to avoid an issue that might be extraordinarily important - more important than any other issue," said Christison.

"I have since decided that....at least some elements in this US government had contributed in some way or other to causing 9/11 to happen or at least allowing it to happen."

Christison (pictured) stated that the suspicious collapse of the three buildings, including building 7 which wasn't hit by a plane, were likely the result of controlled demolitions.

"The reason that the two towers in New York actually collapsed and fell all the way to the ground was controlled explosions rather than just being hit by two airplanes."

"All of the characteristics of these demolitions show that they almost had to have been controlled explosions."

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Referencing the 2.3 trillion dollars that was discovered to be missing from the Pentagon's coffers, Christison emphasized the fact that with an unlimited budget, the scope of operations that could be undertaken by the military-industrial complex are almost without recourse.

"There is so much money now sloshing around throughout not only the CIA but the intelligence components of the Defense Department - which are actually bigger than the CIA - that these guys can do almost anything they want these days."

Christison said that one of the subsidiary motives behind 9/11 was to take attention away from an impending exposure of the missing trillions and criminal proceedings against high officials - just as LBJ had Kennedy assassinated partly to delay imminent corruption probes that would have sent him to prison.

Christison is just the latest in a deluge of former government and intelligence agency insiders to boldly go public with their doubts about the official story behind 9/11 and he has an urgent message for future whistleblowers who might be considering the same course of action.

"We have got to be willing to be discredited, we have got to stick our necks out - this is just plain too important."

Wrong again, SOT. Israel is the master of Double Standards. Israelis commit mass murders and steal land and then actually have the nerve to whine that they are the victims. Give me a break.

The only racist here is you because if you continue to defend the vile and murderous behavior against Arabs then you must agree with it. That makes you the racist and you are the one who is full of hatred.

There is NO excuse for Israel's oppression, rape, torment, and other crimes against the people of Gaza and West Bank. Israel has no right to be in those lands and need to get the helk out. The Israeli occupation of Arab lands is illegal and immoral and is the reason for all the trouble in Israel. It is their own fault for being greedy and racist. The Arabs in Gaza and West Bank are human beings with human rights and have a right to defend themselves against Israel's crimes.

There is NO excuse for Israel's murderous rampage of death and destruction in Lebanon.

Israel uses cluster bombs on children! You defend that? You defend that kind of evil and then call other people hateful and vile and racist and other nasty names?

SOT claims that the author of this blog is vile and hateful for being outraged by Israel's brutal mass murders of children. He also thinks he is righteous for defending this behavior. Now that's some pretty f***ed up thinking right there.

To my Arab brothers: The War with Israel Is Over — and they won. Now let's finally move forward

By Youssef M. Ibrahim

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | With Israel entering its fourth week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks. The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:

The war with Israel is over.

You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.

We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.

At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.

Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.

What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?

We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.

Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.

Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.

Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former New York Times Middle East Correspondent and Wall Street Journal Energy Editor for 25 years, is a freelance writer based in New York City and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Now here is a morelogical and believable comparison than SOT's ranting nonsense.

Whenever the Israeli Zionists are accused of land grabbing they raise the cry of "anti-semitism" against their critics. This manipulation seems to work even though they have openly and shamelessly discussed their many and varied plans and techniques for stealing land from their Arab neighbors.

Their constant crimes against their neighbors are all veriable facts yet they somehow always get away with it. Anyone who resist the Israeli's theft, rape, and murder rampages on Arab land and against Arab citizens is labeled a terrorist and used as an excuse to commit more atrocities under the umbrella term "collective punishment". They hide in plain sight and announce their aggressive aims openly as if they know that no one has the power to go up against them.

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." - David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

This is exactly what the Jewish Zionists did­ and this is what they continue to do. They grab land from someone else for ­­growing room­ and then commence ethnic cleansing to make room for themselves­ just like the Nazis they hate. What is the difference between the German Nazis and the Israeli Zionists? Both were/are Socialists. Both were/are Nationalists.

Just as Nazism was German national socialism, Zionism is Jewish national socialism wrapped in a theocratic state. Both are based on a mythic interpretation of history, the Chosen People, the Master Race. Both were/are committed to Lebensraum/land grabbing.

i dont think they missed, i think its called genocide, its obvious the zionists are bent on causing a holocaust on the arabs. to the zionists we are just human cattle, and a whole bunch of us isnt even worth a finger nail to them. if only they would stop squatting on our lands and go back to poland/russia/germany this genocide would end, and peace would again flourish.

The real murders and terrorists are and have always been white people. They get the government to sponser their killings so that they are legal and pay off the MSM to lie about their killings. Until the terrorist acts against children stop, we must refuse to support the rich white mans system. If we are on a jury, unless a rich white man is on trial (haha yeah right), we must refuse to convict and hang the jury.